Last week, Republicans played elves to President Trump’s Santa, cobbling together an atrocious package of tax giveaways that will mostly help wealthy Americans while piling at least $1 trillion on the national debt. So much for GOP claims to be the party of working people and fiscal responsibility.

Now Trump and the Republican National Committee are trying to rally their party behind the odious figure of Roy Moore, who is running in next week’s special U.S. Senate election in Alabama. To put it mildly, this poses difficult ethical questions for the nation’s governing party: Is there any limit to what party solidarity can justify? Is Trump’s addiction to winning at any price now the Republican Party’s animating political principle?

Moore is a religious extremist ousted not once but twice from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by one of the U.S. Constitution’s core principles: the separation of church and state. That alone should disqualify him from running for local dog catcher, let alone the Senate. So much for the GOP’s professed reverence for constitutional government.